


Jason, Tim, and the Batbat

by Notawiseacre



Series: Vampire AU [9]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Bats, Gen, Good Older Sibling Jason Todd, Good Sibling Jason Todd, Hurt Tim Drake, Jason Has a Potty-Mouth, POV Jason Todd, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Vampire Jason Todd, Vampire Tim Drake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 09:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30020025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notawiseacre/pseuds/Notawiseacre
Summary: Tim is having a hard time adjusting to becoming a vampire.  Jason tries to help, and enlists the aid of one of the Batcave’s original denizens.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Series: Vampire AU [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2131410
Comments: 11
Kudos: 210





	Jason, Tim, and the Batbat

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Vampire AU Worldbuilding](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29652333) by [iselsis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iselsis/pseuds/iselsis). 



Tim wasn’t doing very well.

Jason was not especially good at being a comforting, supportive person, not like Dick was, but he was the only other vampire in the family, and besides that. . .well, he owed the kid. Just because he’d been starving at the time, and not even within shouting distance of his right mind, didn’t mean that attacking and nearly draining Tim was in any way okay. Sure, he’d apologized, and sure, Tim had stopped flinching whenever he saw him, but it had still _happened_. That whole fiasco at Titans Tower wasn’t making the current situation any easier, either: coping with becoming a vampire was difficult enough without having a lot of very recent memories of nearly being killed by one.

And that wasn’t even taking Tim’s _fucking_ bastard of a sperm donor into account. Being turned into a vampire, then locked in a cage and starved and tortured and called a monster for weeks because of it, _by his own father_ , was bound to make it harder to adjust. Sure, Tim knew perfectly well that his sperm donor was a world-class asshole who had never really cared about him from day one, and that his opinion should count for less than nothing, but. . . Well, it was hard with dads. Even if they were world-class assholes, and you _knew_ that, what they said still mattered to you. It couldn’t not. Families just sometimes screwed around with your head that way. And as the son of a world-class asshole himself, Jason knew that firsthand. Willis Todd had never done anything that could even remotely be categorized as “dad-like”, but when he’d smacked Jason around and called him a useless drain on the family, it had still hurt. Even today, some sick part of Jason still actually missed the bastard, just a little. Not anything like his mom, obviously, and he knew both he and the rest of the world were much better off rid of him, but still, yeah. Not much at all, but a little.

So, between vivid memories of a feral Jason nearly killing him, then even more vivid memories of his sperm donor physically brutalizing and psychologically torturing him for weeks, Tim was. . . well.

Not doing very well.

And that wasn’t even all of it. Tim’s entire body was different now, and just the disorientation from that alone couldn’t be easy. Jason had been born a vampire, so he couldn’t exactly empathize with what it was like, trying to learn to function with a new and deeply alien body. He did, however, know what it was like to wake up after drowning in poisonous green, only to find that his body had been moving and fighting and _growing_ without him for more than two years. He remembered the complete disorientation of being noticeably taller than he had been, and all the times he had banged his head because he expected to be shorter. He remembered bumping into things, and tripping, and smacking his hands and elbows and knees against all sorts of surfaces, because his limbs were longer and his hands bigger than he was used to. He remembered accidentally throwing objects he had only intended to pick up, because he was so much stronger than he was when he died. He remembered how much it had made his brain hurt, when his mind and his muscle memory were in complete disagreement as to what he should be doing in spars, and how no sword or staff or dagger or pike had ever gone where he wanted it to, at first, because his reach and coordination were all just foreign enough to him to completely throw him off. It had been a couple of weeks before he felt like his body fit him again, and months before he could really fight with something close to his proper level of skill.

Screwed-up proprioception could be a real bitch, he thought humorlessly.

With all this in mind, Jason knocked on Tim’s bedroom door, and when he got no reply (but could hear the manic clatter of rapid-fire typing, so he knew the baby bird was in there and _working_ , again, forever, for fuck’s sake Timmy. . .) he eased the door open and peeked in.

Tim was sitting at his desk, several stacks of files and printouts cluttered around him, a rainbow of sticky notes curling from every surface, typing feverishly and leaning forward with his nose far closer to the glow of the computer screen than was probably healthy. He had a mug perched on top of one of the taller stacks of paper, and Jason could smell from the doorway that it contained Tim’s new favorite beverage: hot coffee whipped into warmed blood. Dick, in his infinite love of puns and desire to give silly (yet catchy) names to everything, had started calling this mixture a “blood-uccino”.

“Tiiiiiimmy!” sang Jason, stepping into the room.

Tim appeared not to hear him.

“Tim? Timothy? Timson? Tim Tam? Timbuktu?” With each name, Jason stepped closer, until he was close enough to give Tim a good poke in the shoulder. Which was exactly what he did.

Tim gave a little high-pitched _eep_ and flailed his arms wildly. One hand knocked against his mug (fucking _proprioception_ ) and sent it tipping off the pile of papers, but Jason caught it before the precious liquid within could spill everywhere.

Tim blinked at him owlishly. “Jason?” he squeaked.

Jason handed him his mug of blooduccino back. “Time to take a break, baby bird. How long have you been working?”

In answer to this, Tim cast about the room in a vague fashion: he looked at his wrist (no watch, because he hadn’t worn a watch in years, not since he’d started carrying a smartphone with him everywhere), he glanced around the walls in case there was a clock (there wasn’t), he squinted at his computer screen to see the clock there. “Uhh. . .”

Never mind. Jason took his arm. “Come on, Timmy, just because you don’t need as much sleep as before doesn’t mean you should be an obsessive workaholic. We’re going down to the cave.”

Tim allowed himself to be towed along toward the study and the entrance to the Batcave, sipping at his mug as he went. “We are?”

“Yes, we are. I’m staging an intervention. Plus I’ve got something to show you.”

“But—”. Tim had to trot to keep from being pulled off his feet. “Come on, Jason, I have to get those cases done! Why else—”.

He stopped short. Jason noticed, of course. He opened the secret door as if he was angry at it, pulled Tim through, closed it again, and then rounded on him. “Why else what, Timber?” he demanded.

They were halfway down to the cave floor before Tim finally answered, in a worryingly small voice. “Why else keep me around?”

He must have seen Jason start to flare up, because he seemed to feel that he needed to explain himself, and hastened on. “I mean, I’m not Bruce’s son, not like you and Dick. I only became Robin because somebody had to do it while you were. . .gone—”

Jason snorted. “ _Gone_ ,” he scoffed under his breath. “It’s not like it’s racist or something to just say ‘dead’.”

Tim heard this, of course; he had vampire senses now. But he completely ignored it, and carried right on without taking a breath. “I was only ever, like, a placeholder. But now you’re back, and even if you don’t want Robin back now, it still isn’t really _mine_ , not like it was yours, only now I can’t go back home any more, and I’m a _vampire_ , so I have to do something to make it so Bruce will let me stay—” He ran out of air at last, and had to pause to breathe.

Jason jumped in before he could continue. “I’m just gonna stop you right there, Timbit.” They had reached the cave. The only chair was the big one at the Batcomputer desk, and Jason plopped Tim into it before he could resist, while he stayed standing himself, leaning against the edge of the desk. “Look,” he said, “you’re brilliant. Like, really, really brilliant. But sometimes you can be so damn clueless at the same time!”

Tim just blinked at him, confused. It was possible he was just sleep-deprived to the point of incomprehension, but Jason didn’t think so. No, the lack of sleep might have taken down the kid’s defenses enough so that he actually voiced those things, but they were there already. He really, truly, genuinely didn’t see himself as anything more than some sort of uninvited houseguest/unpaid employee. Which. . .how the hell? _Why_ the hell? Oh yeah, his asshole asshat of a sperm donor who had spent his entire childhood brainwashing him to feel valueless, followed by two weeks of brainwashing him to feel like a monster. That probably had something to do with it.

Jason knew some of Bruce’s plans to dismantle every single thing Jack Fucking Drake had ever touched. Green fury licked along the edges of his vision, vampire venom welled up reflexively in his fangs, and he itched to go charging over to Drake Fucking Manor with a sledgehammer and get started on those plans _right the hell now_. He took a deep breath. Priorities. The sledgehammer would come later.

“Look, Tim,” he said. “When you were missing, Bruce was absolutely tearing himself apart. You don’t even know. Everyone has told me how bad it was after I died, and, fine, I’ll take your word for it, but this was _bad_ , Tim. He literally would not sleep, not until Alfred practically force-fed him sedatives. He set a stupid alarm on his wrist computer, because he’s a self-flagellating obsessive-compulsive, telling him how long it had been to the minute since you were last seen. He called in metas, Tim! He had metas in Gotham, searching for you! He had Clark and Conner both doing flyovers, trying to find your heartbeat! Which they couldn’t, of course, because you had turned by then and your heartbeat was different, so they didn’t recognize it. He was a _mess_ , Tim. And it wasn’t because you were a valued employee or some shit, so don’t even go there. He was a dad with a missing son, and you can ask any of the Supes if you don’t believe me.”

Tim just looked at him. He looked tired, wrung-out, as if he didn’t really believe Jason, but didn’t have the energy to argue with him.

“I’m different now, though,” he said finally. “I’m not like you, you were born to be a vampire, but I’m just. . .” He trailed off, his eyes looking anywhere but at Jason. “I’m just myself, but _defective_ , like I got broken and put back together all wrong, so I’ll never work right again.”

Jason was so not the right person to be having this conversation. It should be Dick. Dick would say exactly the right thing, then just hug Tim until everything was better. Jason didn’t think he could do that, and even if he tried, he wasn’t really a hugger, and it would just be awkward and weird and no help at all.

“First of all, baby bird, you aren’t defective or broken or any of that shit. You just feel weird because you have a new body now, and you’re still getting used to it. I felt weird as hell for weeks after I woke up from the pit! I was, like, running into walls and shit, because I couldn’t tell where my arms and legs were half the time. You’re fine, you’re going to be fine, you just have to give yourself time to adapt.”

Tim still looked dubious, but maybe a little bit encouraged, so Jason took that as a win and pressed on.

“And it doesn’t even matter anyway. Bruce loves you, he doesn’t care about your fucking. . .level of functionality, like you’re a microwave or something. He doesn’t care that you’re a vampire now, just that you’re home safe. Jack Drake cared, but he’s an asshole of epic proportions and you should believe the exact _opposite_ of whatever bullshit he told you. Okay?”

Tim looked up, and really seemed to be at least considering believing what Jason had said, which was a major win. An even more major win was _changing the subject away from the awkward emotional shit._ Enough was enough. He was the Red Hood, dammit; there was only so much soul-baring he could physically stand. Which brought him to:

“So, remember what I said about wanting to show you something?”

“...Yeah?” Tim looked a little suspicious, as if he half-expected Jason to hit him in the face with a confetti cannon, or reveal that he’d covered the Robin suit in pink glitter or something. And yeah, admittedly, those were things Jason might do, but come on baby bird, there was a time and a place for those sorts of shenanigans! (Besides, he would be _much_ more likely to do them to Dick anyway.) Instead, he moved over to a place nearby where one of the narrow crevasses in the wall of the batcave disappeared into the darkness, closed his eyes, and concentrated hard.

What he was doing didn’t really have a human analogue, at least as far as he had ever even able to discern. It was like sifting through sand with his fingers to find an object by touch, only the mental equivalent; he sent his mental fingers carefully searching down the narrow gap through the stone, until he hit a much larger open space and then _recognition_. Many small, bright minds clustered there, and he caught the attention of one of them. He let it be known that he would welcome a visit, and there would be snacks. Then he opened the door of the minifridge beside the Batcomputer desk, took out a glass container, set it on the desk, and waited.

Tim opened the lid of the container curiously, jumped, and dropped the lid with a clatter. He glared up at Jason with a revolted look on his face, because the box was filled with fat yellow mealworms. “Jason, what the hell! _Worms_?”

At that moment, a bat came fluttering out of the crevasse. Jason offered his arm, as though escorting a fine lady at a ball, and the bat neatly caught and clung to his sleeve. He transferred it gently to his hand, and stroked between the delicate ears with one finger.

Tim leaned close, completely diverted from his reaction to the box of worms. “Did you. . .did you just summon a bat? Since when can you summon bats!”

“Since always. And I didn’t summon her, like Dracula, that’s just silly. I let her know that there would be petting and yummy mealworms, and she came to visit of her own accord.”

Tim peered more closely at the tiny mammal, engulfed in his brother’s big hand. She had fluffy chestnut-brown fur, little mouselike ears, and eyes as bright and black as polished jet. She peered around, wiggling her ears; she scurried over and around Jason’s fingers, and she opened her mouth (revealing an array of sharp white teeth) and emitted a series of sharp clicks the two vampires could actually feel on their skin. “Is she. . .echolocating us?” Tim asked, in a low voice.

“Yeah, she’s just checking out her surroundings.” With his unoccupied hand, Jason reached into the glass box and selected a mealworm between his fingers. He offered it to the bat, with a soft “Here you go, sweetie.”

The bat pounced at the tasty treat, and ate it with such teeth-flashing and nose-wiggling enthusiasm that it actually made the insect look like it might be delicious. When she finished it, Jason offered her another, and then another. While she was occupied, Tim reached out a finger and gently stroked her velvety back.

“You probably can’t communicate with bats very much yet,” Jason said, “because you’re just a baby vamp still.” Tim looked up, a grumpy expression on his face at being called a baby anything. “But you will be able to soon,” Jason went on, “and other nocturnal animals, too. You will be absolutely _amazed_ by how many owls and urban foxes and possums and things there are in Gotham, once you get back to patrolling. Bats are my favorites, though. Bats are smart; some of them are dolphin-smart, even, and they can sometimes come damn close to speaking in actual words. Plus, they like to roost in places like abandoned warehouses, which villains also like, and villains tend to be noisy and annoying, and bats will remember it and report on how annoying it is. At length.” He chuckled. “Little do the villains know how often they get caught because they got tattled on by irritated bats.”

The bat in Jason’s hand, meanwhile, had had her fill of mealworms, and was now addressing herself industriously to grooming her fur and wings. After a few minutes, she looked up again, and made a few chirps. Tim looked hard at her, furrowing his brow, as if he was trying to understand a very muffled and distant conversation. “Does she. . .want to go back to her nest? Or roost, or whatever it is?”

“Yeah. See? Starting to understand them already. Told you you would.” Jason held out his hand flat, and the bat hopped off his palm, flitted back to the crevasse, and vanished into the dark. Tim followed her with his eyes, still with a look of great concentration on his face; probably he was trying to follow her progress with his mind. Jason didn’t think he could, not yet, but who knew? If any new baby vampire could, it was probably Tim, just from pure stubbornness if nothing else.

“How many bats are there in the Batcave, actually?” Tim wondered.

“Hardly any in this part, because it turns out they think Batman is just as loud and annoying as the villians.” Tim snickered a little at that. “But in other parts of the cave that aren’t accessible to us from here, there are lots. Hundreds, maybe thousands. That’s why I always have mealworms on hand, in case they drop in for a visit.”

The two brothers sat in silence for a minute or two. Then, just to make sure Tim got it, Jason added, “See, baby bird? Being a vampire isn’t all. . .blood and angst and shit. Some of it is spending time with bats, too.”

After another long, but comfortable, silence, Tim said, “Thanks, Jason.”

“Sure, baby bird.”

As they started to head back upstairs, Tim said, “I have a question, though. If there’s a big cavern with lots of bats in it, shouldn’t we smell it in here? What happens to all the guano?”

Jason laughed. “That’s taken care of in the most ecologically friendly way. There’s a good-sized opening at the other end of the cave system, the one the bats use to fly out into Gotham every night. Every so often, Poison Ivy sends some of her pollened-up minions through there to collect it up and take it back to Robinson Park. Robinson Park is the greenest park on the entire east coast, and it’s not just because of Ivy’s magical plant juju.”

Tim absorbed that for a second, then burst out cackling. “And she doesn’t realize that she’s found the Batcave?”

Jason laughed, too. “No! She has no idea whatsoever that her super-secret all-natural fertilizer source is connected to her nemesis’s secret underground lair. And she’s not a vampire, so she can’t find out from the bats, either.”

Tim took a moment, apparently just trying to fully apprehend the scope of this fact, and then burst out laughing again. How long had it been since Tim really, really laughed? Jason realized he didn’t actually know. But, whatever. The batling was laughing now, and Jason called that mission accomplished.

**Author's Note:**

> The particular bat portrayed here is a big brown bat (yes, that’s the actual name), one of the most common species in North America, including in New Jersey. They like to roost in caves, crevices, and human structures (like, you know, villain-occupied-but-otherwise-abandoned warehouses), so I imagine a lot of the Batcave bats would be that kind, as would the grumpy bats whose repose was disturbed by the clamor and cackling of villains. They are fluffballs and too cute for words.
> 
> (Disclaimer: unless you are a vampire, don’t touch wild bats. You can’t communicate with them, and they may bite in self-defense. Contact a wildlife rescue.)


End file.
